'AIDS for the bee industry'

Last week I was asked to a meeting with a campaigner in Stroud who wants to step down a bit from campaigning but wanted to pass on some information about bees and encourage more people to be aware of this issue.

Photo: Bluebells in Standish Woods and below hives at Hawkwood College near Stroud

In terms of bees, apiarists in both the U.S. and Europe have been increasingly concerned by rapidly waning honeybee populations - what has been described by an apiarist with the Pennsylvannia Dept of Ag. as 'AIDS for the bee industry'.

Last week some scientists concluded cell phones were to blame. The British researchers suggest that phone radiation could be disrupting bees' navigation systems: bees act differently around power lines, and a recent study found that up to 70 percent of bees failed to return to hives that contained cordless-phone docking units.

I also read that examination of the dead bees has found a high number of pathogens suggesting a massive immune system crash. The Varroa disease has been ruled out as being the cause, but other theories for the bees' departure have included mites, pesticides, global warming, and genetically modified crops, but so far, none has been definitively proved.

I read a report a while back that laid the blame with chemicals - many of them used in the hives and those present in the environment. But I have just been passed a report which quotes the President of the German Beekeeping Association citing drops in bee populations of up to 80% in some areas. He blames a toxin or agent that bees are not familiar with - German beekeeping officials are more specific about suggesting GM is to blame. This fits with other evidence - and now over 40% of US cornfields are GM insect-resistant crops. The implications of all this go beyond bee welfare.

Albert Einstein once said that: "If honey bees become extinct, human society will follow in four years."

Scary stuff, but bees have survived many serious threats we have thrown at them. I am of course concerned deeply - bees are having to contend with far too much - we can hope that the bees adapt to this latest twist or we can discover the cause and put an end to it - part of that answer must be a return to more organics and an end to dabbling with GM when we know so little about its effects.

One further possibility worth mentioning comes from Rudolf Steiner - at one of Steiners lectures a professional beekeeper, Mr Müller, who contributed to the lectures in the form of insights and questions, rebelled vehemently. He disagreed when Steiner explained the intricacies of the queen bee, mentioning that the modern method of breeding queens (using the larvae of worker bees, a practice that had already been in use for about fifteen years) would have long-term detrimental effects. Infact at the time Steiner is quoted as saying: "A century later all breeding of bees will cease if only artificially produced bees are used . . . . It is quite correct that we can’t determine this today; it will have to be delayed until a later time. Let’s talk to each other again in one hundred years, Mr Müller, then we’ll see what kind of opinion you’ll have at that point".

Seventy-five years have passed and the kind of queen breeding Steiner spoke of has not only continued, but has become the standard, and is now supplemented with instrumental insemination. What about the health of bees now? Michael Thiele in Germany writes:

· Honeybees are dying in those parts of the world, where these practices are common (USA, Canada, European countries);

· During a period of ten years, 75% of the beekeepers in Quebec, Canada vanished together with the bees (1987: 97,000 hives; 1997 only 30,000 hives);

· In 1997 many German beekeeping journals wrote, “Experts estimate the loss of colonies in Germany to be about 50%, some talk of 70%”;

· Over 60% of the American honeybee population has died during the past ten years.

There is a workshop on Biodynamic Bee Keeping 24th to 26th May in Ruskin Mill, Nailsworth. They will specifically be looking at disappearing bees.